Addressing the addressee in imperatives

1 Marking clause type at the syntax/semantics interface A fundamental concept in the description of language is that of clause type, a certain kind of pairing between sentence form and meaning (Sadock & Zwicky 1985):1 1. The major clause types appear to be universal: declaratives, interrogatives, and imperatives. 2. They form a closed system: (a) “There are sets of corresponding sentences, the members of which differ only in belonging to different types.” (b) “The types are mutually exclusive, no sentence being simultaneously of two different types. ” (S&Z 1985: 158) The clause type system is not the same as the morphosyntactic mood system, despite their frequent overlap in the case of imperatives. 3. Their meanings represent specific illocutionary forces: assertion, requesting information, or-dering, and perhaps others. (An illocutionary act is performed in saying something, and Austin (1962) emphasizes that it is conventional, i.e. part of the meaning, broadly con-strued.) Illocutionary force and the semantics of clause type cannot be identified, though, for two reasons: First, many illocutionary forces aren’t associated with a particular grammatical form, e.g. promising or threatening. And second, the illocutionary force of one clause type may be expressed by another:2 (1) a. You must leave now. (declarative with the force of ordering